Arriving here after midnight, Donald Trump promised a raucous crowd that he would end trade deals supported by “crooked Hillary,” scrap the Affordable Care Act and dramatically restrict the arrival of refugees in communities that don’t want them.
“When I’m elected president, we will suspend the Syrian refugee program, and we will keep radical Islamic terrorists the hell out of our country. We’ll keep them out,” the Republican nominee told hundreds of people packed into a barn at the Loudoun County fairgrounds, with even more listening from outside.
The stop was Trump’s fifth since Sunday afternoon, several of them in Democratic strongholds he is trying to wrest away from Hillary Clinton in hopes of creating a path to victory on Tuesday.
After starting his day in Iowa, where polls show him ahead, Trump stumped in Minnesota, Michigan and Pennsylvania, all states that have gone for Democrats for more than a quarter century. Until recently, polls had showed Clinton with a comfortable lead in Virginia as well.
Clinton, meanwhile, campaigned in Pennsylvania, where she maintains a lead, and in Ohio and New Hampshire, two battleground states that could go either way. Clinton has maintained a narrow lead nationally and has several more plausible scenarios than Trump for winning in the Electoral College.
The candidates’ frenzied pace Sunday came as news broke that, after an expedited review of newly discovered Clinton emails, FBI Director James B. Comey had affirmed his decision that she should not face charges related to her use of a personal server as secretary of state.
During Trump’s Michigan rally — a state a Republican presidential candidate last carried in 1988 — he said Clinton was “being protected by a rigged system, it’s a totally rigged system.”
“Hillary Clinton is guilty,” Trump said. “She’s knows it. The FBI knows it. The people know it. Now it’s up to the American people to deliver justice at the ballot box on November 8th.”
Comey’s announcement on Oct. 28 that the FBI was scrutinizing newly discovered email reinvigorated Trump’s campaign in the closing stretch of the race, and polls in multiple battleground states have tightened since then.
Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri reacted to the FBI news on the campaign’s flight to a Cleveland rally, telling reporters: “We are glad to see that ... [Comey] has confirmed the conclusions he reached in July, and we are glad that this matter is resolved.”
Clinton is using the closing days of the race to try to both shore up support in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania where she has been leading and to tip the balance in other swing states.
Clinton appeared Sunday night in New Hampshire, where the race has tightened considerably.
“This election is a moment of reckoning,” Clinton told her crowd in Manchester. “It a choice between division and unity. ... What’s really on the ballot is what kind of country we want for our children and grandchildren.”
Clinton was introduced at the rally by Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father of slain U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who died while serving in the 2004 Iraq War.
Khan, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention and was later criticized by Trump, posed a pointed set of questions to Trump about whether his son, a Muslim, and other minorities would have a place in his America.
“Would anyone who isn’t like you have a place in your America, Mr. Trump?” Khan said. “On Tuesday, we’re going to prove America belongs to all of us.”
Clinton said that Khan’s family “exemplify the values that make America great.”
Folk singer James Taylor performed at the rally ahead of Clinton’s appearance.
Clinton appeared earlier Sunday at a rally in Cleveland, where she was introduced by Cleveland Cavaliers basketball star LeBron James, part of an effort to spark enthusiasm in Ohio, a state where polls have showed Trump leading.
“I want an America where everyone has a place, where everyone is included,” Clinton said there. “And I know there is a lot of frustration, even anger, in this election season. I see it, I hear it, you know, I’m a subject of it. I get it. But anger is not a plan. Anger is not going to get us new jobs.”
The more optimistic look toward the future was a script her campaign had hoped to use as a springboard past the exceptional rancor of the last several months of her contest with Trump, but it had been muted somewhat by the uncertainty surrounding the renewed FBI inquiry and the tightening polls.
Sunday’s event was Clinton’s last scheduled visit to Ohio, where she trails despite heavy emphasis on turning out black voters in Cleveland. James was part of that effort, as were husband and wife singers Jay-Z and Beyoncé, who performed a get-out-the-vote concert with Clinton on Friday night.
In attempt to cobble together the 270 electoral votes needed to win, Trump has new targets in his sights in historically Democratic states including Michigan, Minnesota and New Mexico.
Once thought to be safe for Democrats, Michigan has become a last-minute battleground, with Clinton heading to Grand Rapids on Monday, the campaign announced this weekend. President Obama, who won Michigan twice, will campaign in Ann Arbor on Monday. And former president Bill Clinton made a stop in Lansing on Sunday after visiting churches in Flint.
Clinton began her day Sunday by campaigning in Philadelphia after attending a get-out-the-vote concert in the city on Saturday night. And she will return to the state for two rallies on the eve of Election Day, a sign that the Keystone State is among the battlegrounds where her lead over Trump has dwindled in recent days.
Her campaign announced that rock star Bruce Springsteen would join her at a Philadelphia rally that will also include President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama.
Clinton also deployed a full slate of high-level surrogates around the country on Sunday, including Obama, who appeared in Kissimmee, Fla., and poked fun at Trump.
“Apparently his campaign has taken his Twitter,” Obama told the crowd at Osceola County Stadium. “In the last two days, they had so little confidence in his self control, they said we’re just gonna take away your Twitter. Now, if somebody can’t handle a Twitter account, they can’t handle the nuclear codes.”
Trump started his five-state swing in Sioux City in eastern Iowa, close to the Nebraska border. Nebraska is one of two states that can split its electoral votes between candidates, and in 2008, one electoral vote from the Omaha area went to Obama.
Trump’s stop in Northern Virginia on Sunday night came as Republicans see new hope in a state where Clinton has long held a comfortable lead.
He promised “massive” tax cuts for the middle class and to rebuild inner cities that he said in some cases are “worse than war zones.” And Trump decried NAFTA and other trade deals that he said are robbing the country of jobs.
“We are living through the greatest jobs theft in the world,” Trump said. “We will stop the jobs from leaving Virginia, that I can tell you.”
At an earlier rally Sunday in Minneapolis, Trump told the crowd that Clinton was taking the Democratic leaning state of Minnesota for granted by not visiting it.
Trump also warned about a local immigrant population: Somalis, most of them Muslims, who have left their war-ravaged country and settled in large numbers around Minneapolis.
“You don’t even have the right to talk about it. You don’t even know who’s coming in. You’ll find out. You’ll find out,” Trump said. He mentioned a recent stabbing case, in which the suspect is a man whose parents brought him from Somalia when he was three months old. “You’ve suffered enough in Minnesota.”
In Michigan, rock star Ted Nugent, a native of the state who in a 2012 Facebook post called for Clinton to be tried and hanged for treason, provided entertainment at the rally, declaring it was “good to see the real Michigan together.”
When Trump took the stage, he ticked off a series of trade deals that he said had devastated the state. He falsely claimed that Clinton is supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a pending deal supported by Obama.
Clinton previously backed the deal while secretary of state but has since come out against it.
Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign continues to use its huge financial advantage over Trump to press its case to swing voters on the airwaves.
The campaign on Sunday released two national ads appealing to moderate and Republican voters to reject Trump and embrace Clinton. Both ads feature straight-to-camera testimonials from Republican military veterans who say they cannot vote for their party’s nominee, citing Trump’s comments about women. Another two-minute ad was set to air Monday night, aimed at reaching about 20 million people, according to a campaign aide.
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